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One of the absolutely, positively, hyperbole-intensified, hardest things for me to learn and retain in ceramics is to wait for the right time to do the right thing to the right amount of clay at the right moisture content. There are delicious names that potters give to describe the stages of clay wetness, and here are some common “cheese names”: brie, mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan. (Hungry?) If you just think of how relatively wet these cheeses are and how they might behave when modeled a la ceramique, you get the idea a teensy bit. For years now, I have come up crying when I tried to get clay to stand and behave when it is brie or even fresh mozz consistency OR when I try too zealously to shape or bend it when it is cheddar or, heavens, parmesan hard. You see those cracks?

So Creative Timing in ceramics not only includes when the Muse/Genius arrives and tells you NOW!!!! but also includes where your clay piece is at when that alpenhorn sounds. Riding this magic carpet of Creative Timing is part of avoiding the ultimate frustration and embarassment of know-better failure as well as grabbing the soaring, roaring upwelling of spirit and plain ol’ fun that nailing it gives. And I suspect that speaks true in any sport or creative endeavor. Probably even poker.

That said, I am full of ceramic pertinacity, so slowly, slowly, slowly I have gotten better at the Waiting Game. Yes, it is possible to rewet dry clay and to dry out wetter stuff, but it is totally sweet to have the rhythm in place, because then it matches the creative surges that might be accompanying the reason I am in the studio in the first place!

Yet, as I have heard someone who eschews vacations say, it’s because, “Wherever I travel, I take me along,” the bald fact is I am just me, livin’ my day-to-day. Some days I have good ideas and energy, some days I am dull, distracted and dissident. But I really have not survived this long as an artist to mind any of it. I just know to go in the studio regardless of what the finger-to-the-winds of my creative mood reads… and it generally is the right thing to do.

I stalled in addressing this project today, for familiar, but ultimately dismissible, reasons. Karen and I have agreed to a deadline and deadlines are conducive to showing up, at least to me. Also, the clay was ready for my next impulse. Deadline + clay readiness = dismissible reasons for creative avoidance.

I wanted to apply a subtle nubbly texture to the bottle form I am working on because Karen, in her note to me, mentioned that she made her art with “colored pencil, paint, and Sharpie marker on patterned paper.” I can’t replicate the pencil, paint or marker, directly, because they would burn out in the kiln, but, hey, I can do texture! So the first shot above is of the homespun fabric that I applied to the perfectly-ready (mozzarella-hard) clay and then rubbed a bit with a nice rounded wooden tool. Second shot is what that left the clay bottle looking like: happily it is reminiscent of patterned paper!

So it was a few hours well-spent. All in good time, especially in clay.

Oh, what have I done? It all started innocently with a “What if?” And that one “WI?” led to another and another, so that I presently find myself in this fun little puzzlement: How to alter the art sent to me by Karen Koch in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased DeKooning?” (And I take great satisfaction knowing she has the same conundrum over the work I sent her.)

See, first it was what if I joined a book club organized by artbiz maven Alyson Stanfield on Twitter (yes, Twitter: #dekooning.) We read, more or less together, DeKooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. And what if one of the other readers pondered if any one of us could let our work be destroyed as in “Erased DeKooning.” And what if I tweeted that I thought I could and what if I and that other reader actually did this?

Fast forward to today: Karen and I have sent each other a piece of our work and are independently gathering our ideas about just what to do. She has bloggedseveral times about it and you can see both works there. What I hope to record here is how I develop my response. So up top you see a photo in my studio with a bunch of slabs of a nice white porcelain-type clay called Geostone, and behind it the work (on the right) and card and envelope that Karen sent to me.

Below that photo you see what I did with those slabs today, a beginning container of some sort. I DO have a Big Idea, which I got in the shower, but I won’t spill it all out right now. Let’s just see what happens and I will make posts as I go.

What I think makes this a bit more difficult than just making OR destroying one’s own work, or even trading privately with another artist:

Goes against the creative grain a smidge. Need to stretch, though, and that is good.

Feels wrong to wreck someone else’s work, even with permission. Again, more stretching. Still feel a strong urge to honor this destruction. Make it holy, even.

This particular experiment is being done in front of an audience of sorts, as both Karen and I are posting and blogging and tweeting and emailing and showing and telling and talking to many other people about it. Although it was born in a public forum, it did not occur to me that this would be the case when we traded and created, so the watching eyes and ears add another factor. Fine, so the performance ham in me can come out and play too! It’s been awhile.

This is definitely NOT like the “Erased DeKooning” because of the two-way exchange and the fact that we were not intending to replicate that. We are more interested in seeing how it feels to let go of an end product, something we both cared enough about to not erase/edit ourselves. “What if….” is a pretty endless proposition.

Those two (formerly) blank journal pages up there were mine to do anything with: write, draw, apply thin collages… whatever called me. I had a deadline I wanted to honor before mailing it back to Quinn McDonald in the padded envelope provided, but that was it. I took my sweet time and for once was blessedly serene. No Blank Page Problem here! I was in the tree-stand waiting to trap some lovely creative prey. I was drowsing at the Old Fishing Hole, knowing I would lightly spring into action when I felt the niggling idea on the line. I’d say it was deliciously downright recreational and a grand way to allow art in.

Since this was the Unthemed Journal #3568 from the Traveling Journals Project, the only thing I felt vital to the effort was my well-considered and deep authenticity. Oh, and don’t fuss. Yeah, yeah: go deep in the most spontaneous way possible! The more this thought grew, the more it seemed the pages needed to be about a moment, and not much more. I wanted an enso, a Japanese brush circle. That much was settled.

Here came the technical, logistical, physical, spatial, practical, formal, artful problems shuffling in their predictable queue right behind that enso-shaped wish. I kept on waiting. I invited them to my campfire, my drum circle, my tea room. We got along great. They left, tipsy and sated, their ears ringing a bit and I received turquoise and amber, opals and jade!

They (by now very old friends) suggested that to make an enso in an unthemed traveling journal I use: high contrast, blankish simplicity, pen stippling, my own handwriting, label machine printing, red, humor, and a tiny surprise, but not to plan it in the slightest, just begin. The real-time making was over in, say, 27 minutes. Sweet.

May I recommend you give yourself a similar creative gift? Sign up for one of the Traveling Journals: Unthemed, Travel, Dreams, and/or, if you’re near Quinn, Summer in Phoenix. You’ll see how by clicking on that link in the second paragraph up there. You also can see all the other pages completed so far. Quinn is definitely in my emerging online family, and I told her I loved doing this so much, to please put me on the lists for Travel and Dreams. Maybe I will see you there.

And, thanks, Quinn, for letting me use the photo you took, since I forgot to!

One of the many things I do during my week, besides making and blogging about my own ceramic art, is to help beginning ceramics students at nearby Cabrillo College in Aptos, CA. My special love is the handbuilding program, and this semester I volunteered in two classes taught by Kathryn McBride which met on Mondays and Wednesdays. I have a fairly long affiliation by now (25 classes worth, which I will describe sometime), and I have developed a delicious meta-awareness regarding the cycle of students and their passions, struggles and astonishments.

We just finished a profound Finals Week. Folks, the depth of discussion in the Ceramics Lab was Graduate Level. By that I definitely do NOT mean slinging some highfalutin’ BS about one’s ART, but a real attempt to describe this convoluted process in individual terms: learnings and meanings. What happens, for example, when you think you’re in for an Easy A by Playing in the Mud, and instead you find yourself curious and caring, confused and committed? Chalk one up for the misconceptions abounding about clay! Happens all the time.

Among the more common surprises to students is that there are hundreds of clay types, glazes and decoration possibilities and nearly as many firing options. Right now I would rank primitive pit firings as one of the most profound for students, electric and gas kiln firings as the most frustrating in terms of having to wait a long time for results and for NOT Getting What You Want, and Raku (pictured above) as the most terrifyingly giddy instant happiness ever.

What you see in the photo is that exact Zen moment of aliveness: that glowing kiln full of redhot pieces, emitting insane heat and sparkling with melted-glaze works that students are removing with gloves and tongs to transfer to their prepared reduction cans filled with sawdust and newspaper shreds, to smolder and cool and turn the unglazed clay black and the glazed areas crackly and flashed with metallic highlights.

At no time in a semester is there more presence and focus, except maybe when it is one’s turn in the Final to chat a bit about what happened to you in the past four months in Room 3013. In both cases, the observation of “how you do anything is how you do everything” is true.

I am happy at the end of most semesters: it is good to start and it is good to finish. This semester I am bursting with joy from the students’ loving descriptions of their engagement with this whole huge magnificent endeavor, because it matches my own.